


Carry Me Home

by WitchRavenFox



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Derek Uses His Words, Friendship, Gen, I Just Needed To Write This, POV Stiles, Pre-Slash, i don't even know what else to tag at this point, pre-season 5A
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 13:09:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9442013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchRavenFox/pseuds/WitchRavenFox
Summary: Stiles gets a call during the summer before senior year.Stiles gasped awake and reaching out for something before he rolled on to his back and remembered he was alone. He blinked hard and scrubbed his eyes before he realised that what tore him from his sleep was his cell, and that it was way too early.‘Uh, hello?’‘Stiles? Did I wake you up?’ A deep voice asked down the line with a hint of a smile.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The song lyrics are ones that I almost had on loop while I was writing my first and second draft of this. They felt fitting to me, and I hope they work for you too.
> 
> No money is being made form the publishing of this work, and I do not own or have any rights over the show, or its characters. And this is my first Teen Wolf fic, so concrit is welcome.  
> Please do not use this without my express permission anywhere else.  
> Any errors are entirely my own, so if you spot any, please drop me a PM me and I will correct it :)

_‘Now I know that I’m not_  
_All that you got, I guess that I, I just thought_  
_Maybe we could find new ways to fall apart_  
_But our friends are back/So let’s raise a tab_  
_Cause I found someone to carry me home_  
_Tonight, we are young’_  
\- We Are Young by Fun feat. Janelle Monáe

 

Stiles gasped awake and reaching out for something before he rolled on to his back and remembered he was alone. He blinked hard and scrubbed his eyes before he realised that what tore him from his sleep was his cell, and that it was way too early.

‘Uh, hello?’

‘Stiles? Did I wake you up?’ A deep voice asked down the line with a hint of a smile.

Laying back, Stiles slung an arm up over his face. ’Dude, its like, 5am here. You couldn’t wait a few hours to talk to me?’ He snarked. A sigh came down the line, and Stiles was sure that Derek was rolling his eyes, and that made him smile.

‘Sorry, I, uh, forgot that all you want during the summer is to sleep long into the mornings. No going for dawn runs!’

‘Are you sassing me at this stupid time for a reason, Hale?’ Stiles retorted quietly. ‘Can you do it later?’

‘No! I mean, please. I need to…talk. Or…can you tell me something? Anything really, catch me up on things I’m missing back home. Please!’ Derek pleaded.

Stiles couldn’t say exactly why he didn’t just switch off his cell, except, Derek didn’t call. He never called Stiles unless it was important life or death stuff. He was a drop a text to check-in kind of a guy, once a week so no-one would worry. So this had to be important.

‘Uh, ok. I can do that. I can totally do that for you. So, senior year starts next week, I mean for all of us that are seniors. Which is cool, except that I am now super worried about what will happen, what will change. I’m totally focusing on keeping us all together, as a friendship group so we can stay in touch, visit, still spend quality Pack time together. So that even in college we can all still be connected. I think its important. My dad doesn’t speak to anyone from when he was in high school, and I think thats kinda sad, y’know. I have this vision for when we go to college, but I don’t think anyone is really taking me seriously. I don’t think they get why I’m worried.’

Derek made a groan down the line and coughed in a way that had Stiles close his eyes slowly. ‘Why are you worried? Friends grow apart over time. It happens.’

‘I know they do, but…It’s going to sound crazy, but I don’t want them to forget me. Forget everything we’ve been through.’ Stiles found himself confessing, to Derek of all people. The confession should have left him feeling cold, but instead he felt…warm maybe. The kind of warm he used to get when Derek would level a pale green gaze his way.

‘Hmm, you know, even if they do, I won’t. You’re really not easy to forget.’ Derek paused, leaving Stiles with the impression that admission wasn’t supposed to happen. ‘Scott will never forget you. You’re brothers in the most important of ways, vital. And you still have Malia.’

Stiles shifted in his bed at the mention of his now ex-girlfriend but still good friend. ‘Uh, Malia not so much. I mean she’s there for me, but we are… just friends now. Just friends. She has stuff and I have stuff…there’s a lot of stuff. Have you… have you maybe spoken to her recently? I mean, she is your cousin so I don’t know if you want to.’  
There’s a firm silence that runs down the line, and a swallowing sound that Stiles hears. Maybe Derek just had some coffee.

‘Malia only wants to know me as Pack. She doesn’t want to refer to being family, and that is okay I guess. After all, she was brought up as a Tate before the accident, and then she was a coyote for eight years. She likes me as Pack.’ He sounded a little bitter about it, there was that note in his voice, Derek sounded broken. That was not good for this call, not good at all. Stiles thought of something that could get the conversation onto more comfortable ground.

‘Hey, how’s Cora? She hasn’t emailed me all the time you’ve been with her, tell her that that is not cool. Bad friend! I miss her, I miss both of you, like, I’m missing Pack members. Missing family.’

‘Hold on, I’ll ask her.’ Derek’s voice went all muffled as shouted at Cora. Stiles wished he could hear her voice, they spoke a lot about…things. He wasn’t kidding when he said Cora felt like Pack. Stiles got that kind of feeling all the time now since Scott became True Alpha of the group and Derek took his Beta self off on his travels. ‘Cora says she’s fine and she says… Cora I’m not telling him that. Can you get out of my room? Please! Honestly Stiles, she is making up for all those years I missed out on being a big brother. She is making me pay while I’m here. I thought about making the move permanent but I’m kind of not sure what's happening. I kind of miss Beacon Hills, it’s home. It has its own set of, um, charms. Stiles? Did you fall back to sleep?’

‘No, I just don’t think you’ve ever said so much to me at once that didn’t involve inputting some kind of doom and gloom knowledge. It’s…different.’ Stiles worried his nail between his teeth.

‘Okay, so senior year…I’ll come back for it. I’ll see if I can convince Cora as well.’ Derek muttered, ignoring Stiles’ comment. ‘I know she misses…spending time with your sarcastic ass.’ Derek laughed quietly. ‘She, uh, she says that she will find a way to join you, I mean, she starts college in a month, but she’ll come with me. I’ll be back before it starts. I still own the loft, but I’ve had work done on it, rented out some of the lower spaces to other preternatural and supernaturals. Satomi has one of them, so I know she will help to keep everyone in line for me. I guess I could get a job too. For a while.’

As Derek rambled, Stiles rolled onto his side and tucked the phone under his ear on the pillow, and hugged his duvet closer. This, Derek talking freely, was something he didn’t want to stop. His voice was warming, and Stiles, well he knew what he’d do when he got off the phone, it was not what friends are supposed to do after speaking, Stiles knew that much. Damn crush would not go the fuck away.

‘Stiles, are you okay?’ Derek queried slowly. ‘Your heart just went crazy.’

‘And under normal circumstances I would probably tell you a lie. But as you are paying such close attention to my heartbeat - invasive by the way - no, no I’m not okay. I’m…I know things will change this year. We’ve all been through so much to just stay the same, but I had hoped things would be easier. My vision includes the whole pack. Including you and Cora too, but… Scott’s barely around for one reason or another. Jackson may not come back for senior year, Issac is off soul-searching after Allison…Hey have you heard from Issac? Anyway, me spending time alone basically sucks, and it would suck so much less if you were here with me. I mean, its not like we ever hung out before, but we talk now, don’t we? Sometimes. I’m holding onto that more than anything else. You and Cora.’ Stiles took a deep breath and felt his chest expand and listened to Derek shift on the other end of the line. ‘Is that…that’s weird, right? It’s okay if it’s weird, we don’t have to talk about it-’

‘No, it’s not weird. It’s, it’s really nice, Stiles. Like a pack within a pack.’ Stiles thought that Derek sounded gravelly, like he was filled with emotion. He liked to think that Derek was anyway. ‘Isaac will be back. Or at least he said he was planning on it. It’s just with Erica and Boyd, and then Allison… It’s like we have two packs, Isaac doesn’t know if he’ll go back to Scott, or come to me, because somehow, after everything, I’m still just a Beta. I don’t know if I wanna be an Alpha, but I don’t know if I can follow Scott either.’

‘Dude don’t go attacking someone to be an Alpha, don’t almost die or actually die. No dying. I can’t take it if you die. I’m only human, no more death please. Let me graduate high school before we start playing that game again.’

‘I promise,’ Derek whispered solemnly.

‘Good, that's good, really good.’ Stiles huffed out. ‘Are you- do you feel any better? I mean, you sounded nothing like your normal self.’

Derek sighed down the line and Stiles was sure that Derek was rubbing over his stubble with his free hand. He missed seeing that.

‘Yes, I, ah, I needed grounding. Reminding. I’m not sleeping so well, so I thought reaching out would be… Well Cora said that you don’t always sleep so well… she may have mentioned that sometimes you text her at crazy times. So I thought you getting a call would be different, from that.’

‘Oh, this was a good idea then. I’ve had all sorts of crap with sleep and dreams… Are you having bad dreams too?’ Stiles rambled on, ‘I mean you don’t have to tell me if you are. I know I didn’t wanna talk about it when it was me. I still have troubles sleeping sometimes too.’

Stiles listened as Derek groaned and shifted about more where he was, and he tried not to imagine it. Was Derek wearing track pants and lazing around on the couch? Was he wearing one of those short sleeved Henley’s that he used to love so much? See he couldn’t not think about it, because maybe Derek was laying on his bed, wearing next to nothing and-

‘I can’t tell you details, just…it’s like a feeling I get. Like there is something I want, so badly in real life. In my dream, this recurring dream, I guess, it’s given to me. Offered to me, and I want to have it so badly. But it’s not real, and I know it’s not real. But it makes me happy, so happy, and it can almost feel so real, skin on skin feels real and I just…I want the real thing.’

Uncomfortable at knowing that Derek wanted and was afraid to want made Stiles remember how vulnerable Derek could be, had been after Jennifer and Kate using him, after losing Laura and his family, after Paige. He sounded lost and Stiles just wanted to tug him down the phone line and hug him, tightly. The kind that he had never given him before, the kind he had wanted to give after Boyd but settled for a hand on his shoulder. Like he wanted to kiss him. No, not the time to think about that now though.

‘Okay, I know that you have missed a lot of stuff, but, will you come home? Please. Cora too would be nice, but you should be here. You belong here.’ _With me._ ‘With Pack.’

‘What about Braeden? Do I just…?’

‘Look I don’t know her the way you know her, but if you explain to her, I’m sure she’ll understand.’

‘It’s more complicated than that. She’s… and then I’m…’ Derek bit out a laugh. ‘Know what, you’re right. Of course you are.’

Stiles smiled and let it shine through his voice. ‘Of course I’m right. Haven’t you learned by now? Honestly, over two years of friendship, you should know I have more brains than anything else.’

‘Except sass.’

‘Except sass, obviously. I’m the sassiest person in Beacon Hills most days,’ Stiles grinned into his phone.

Derek’s laughter rumbled through Stiles as if he were sitting right next to him. It made him feel as though warm pools of honey were being swept over him and settling deep. Stiles had forgotten how deep that laugh was, how rich, and how it caressed all of the right spots within him. Stiles tried to calm his heart rate, because now he was worried that again it was racing out of control. He tried to listen to his own breathing, get it in sync with Derek’s, small puffs of his own along with Derek’s long, steady pulls. Stiles felt the pull of drowsiness on his conscious after minutes.

‘Stiles?’ Derek murmured down the line to him. ‘Sassiest mouth in all of Beacon Hills, I think you need to go back to sleep. I’ve bothered you enough for one very early morning.’

‘Hmm. ‘Kay.’ Stiles heard Derek shift and had a verbal urge to just- ‘Hey, you know that you can do this anytime, right? Not just at stupid in the morning. I’m always here, here for you to talk to. Or I’ll talk if you need me to. I talk a lot. As you know.’

‘Oh I know. I have very vivid memories of you doing nothing but talking.’ Stiles imagined Derek rolling his eyes and those bunny teeth in a beautiful smile before Derek ordered him to ‘Go to sleep. And thanks.’ Before he cut off the line.

Stiles still had his goodbye on his lips, but when the drowsiness finally claimed him, he clung to the knowledge that Derek reached out to him, like he did in Stiles’ dreams.  


And that was pretty special.


End file.
